A change in the way people own property?

Malthusian

westernpromise wrote: »

This was the work of the RAF.

Quite. Whenever someone says "we should be more like Germany / Holland / other European country that I visited on my recent holiday / junket, we should have straighter roads, more cycle lanes, more gigantic plazas and squares, more flats, more etc", what they mean is that we should lose a devastating war and have our cities blown to smithereens and tanks driven all over them. Then rebuilt along more modernist lines.

If not being blown to bits was such a disadvantage for a city, there would be new cities all over the UK - not just Milton Keynes - and people would move out of badly-designed old cities into futuristic new ones.

In reality people like having their own garden more than they like cycle lanes.

zagubov wrote: »

We've all theoretically got about an acre each if it was all shared out equally.

Thank Christ it isn't shared out equally then. I grew up in a house which had an acre of land. It was a royal pain in the !!!! for my dad to mow.

GreatApe

zagubov wrote: »

We've all theoretically got about an acre each if it was all shared out equally.

There have been revised guidelines to expand the floorspace in new London dwellings. This needs to be replicated or exceeded everywhere. We need proper planning to include infrastructure.

And as for the housing stock, I wonder how much of it is under-or over-occupied compared with other countries?

Lots more people in Germany and France live 1 person per house.

Something like 20 million homes in Germany are single occupancy.

Housing is not like food where we can define a definite shortage and excess. Housing is something we want more and more of.

The Germans have about 40% more housing floorspace per capita than the UK. That is a massive difference yet their papers still cry housing shortage eg 'MERKEL'S HOUSING CRISIS: More than a MILLION people in Germany could be homeless next year'

If we built 11 million more homes with zero population growth we would have the same housing floorspace per capita as Germany. Yet the papers would still read housing crisis.

GreatApe

ukcarper wrote: »

I agree we need a more joined up planning system.

I don’t know about compared to other countries but I would guess it’s quite high, in my road there over 14 4 bed houses and the majority of those only have 2 people living in them.

UK homes are too small many homes have bedrooms that can barely fit a bed and wardrobe

Those 4 bedroom homes should be reclassified as two bedrooms. I'm sure if the UK had a true mass house building program and houses become cheap then people would buy next door knock through and have 1 decent sized home rather than 2 mini homes. Or of course people sharing now say two friends share a 1 bedroom flat using the living room as a bedroom too. In a more homes sinario they just rent 1 flat each.

zagubov

GreatApe wrote: »

Lots more people in Germany and France live 1 person per house.

Something like 20 million homes in Germany are single occupancy.

Housing is not like food where we can define a definite shortage and excess. Housing is something we want more and more of.

The Germans have about 40% more housing floorspace per capita than the UK. That is a massive difference yet their papers still cry housing shortage eg 'MERKEL'S HOUSING CRISIS: More than a MILLION people in Germany could be homeless next year'

If we built 11 million more homes with zero population growth we would have the same housing floorspace per capita as Germany. Yet the papers would still read housing crisis.

Easy enough to do with good spacious flats.

ukcarper

GreatApe wrote: »

UK homes are too small many homes have bedrooms that can barely fit a bed and wardrobe

Those 4 bedroom homes should be reclassified as two bedrooms. I'm sure if the UK had a true mass house building program and houses become cheap then people would buy next door knock through and have 1 decent sized home rather than 2 mini homes. Or of course people sharing now say two friends share a 1 bedroom flat using the living room as a bedroom too. In a more homes sinario they just rent 1 flat each.

How many and how relevant is that to under occupancy. My house and others in road have 4 reasonable size bedrooms plenty big enough for a family of 5 and most are occupied by 2 people infact a couple are occupied by 1 person. Bedrooms in a family house do not have to be huge.

GreatApe

:

zagubov wrote: »

Easy enough to do with good spacious flats.

The UK would need to build about 10 million homes (with zero population growth) to get to where the Germans are today. Where are we going to put all those homes? 10 million homes = 3 x the size of London or 25x the size of Birmingham. Not to mention the £2 trillion cost in building them and the £50 billion annually in upkeep and costs.

And what exactly is the point? Sure we would have millions more living alone and the total fertility rate would fall further. What is the advantage you seek to create?

GreatApe

ukcarper wrote: »

How many and how relevant is that to under occupancy. My house and others in road have 4 reasonable size bedrooms plenty big enough for a family of 5 and most are occupied by 2 people infact a couple are occupied by 1 person. Bedrooms in a family house do not have to be huge.

What kind of metric is bedrooms?
A 100 sqm 2 bedroom home is just as big as a 100sqm 4 bedroom home
Couples typically want 80+ sqm
Families 120+ sqm
And ideally 2.7meters+ floor to ceiling height

Anyway you can't define under or over occupancy
Housing is not food which has a definite calories a persons needs

Even the Germans who have about 50% more housing space than us (per capita) are complaining of a housing shortage.

ukcarper

GreatApe wrote: »

What kind of metric is bedrooms?
A 100 sqm 2 bedroom home is just as big as a 100sqm 4 bedroom home
Couples typically want 80+ sqm
Families 120+ sqm
And ideally 2.7meters+ floor to ceiling height

Anyway you can't define under or over occupancy
Housing is not food which has a definite calories a persons needs

Even the Germans who have about 50% more housing space than us (per capita) are complaining of a housing shortage.

Where do you get your figures, want does not mean it’s necessary.

Do you not think it’s an inefficient use of existing housing stock if many houses that can easily accommodate a family of 5 (not necessarily to your standards but standards many people have found acceptable) are accommodating 1 or 2 people.

LydiaJ

DigForVictory wrote: »

I can't afford to help my lads onto the property ladder (they are still in school to be fair, but just getting them to Uni will cost) but I can help them with knowledge - like make time & budget to see a lawyer & get advice on how to club together to afford a house rather than pay someone else's mortgage.
All thanks to the MSE posters.

Read what Martin has to say about paying for uni. Unless your kids expect to earn shedloads, it's usually better not to pay for it upfront. Well, it is if future governments aren't going to change the rules retroactively. See, in particular, point 15 of this article.

GreatApe wrote: »

In the past people got married and had kids and worked together to sort their lives out and make something of themselves which is the right way to go about it

In the past, mortgages were largely affordable on a single full-time income. People got married young, and had babies young, and the wife gave up work to stay at home with the children. Few of them were in the "we could afford a house or a baby but not both" situation that my younger friends at work complain of.

SingleSue wrote: »

My grandparents left their money to my parents and their siblings, not that it was a huge amount each as there were quite a lot of siblings and only one house (maternal grandmother lived in a council house but had been left some money in a will just weeks before she died).

Re distribution, I already know it is not skipping a generation as I will be the executor of their wills and already have my instructions. Their estate is currently approx £300k (mostly made up of their house) but it will have to be split 3 ways and is not taking into account possible care home fees or funeral costs.

Just in case of other questions, there is no other side. I am divorced and even if we were still married, ex mother in law has no assets and is widowed.

My parents and grandparents were born here and have worked here their entire lives (apart from a short spell when dad was in the merchant navy)

I hope your parents remain healthy for while yet, Sue, but if and when you do get your third of their estate, what would you do with it? Might it be enough to give you a chance of buying somewhere, or would you remain in rented? Or don't answer if you'd rather not, obvs.

GreatApe wrote: »

Average UK born woman has less than 2 kids. I can't be bothered to check right now but for argument sake let's say 1.75 kids

The average Inheritences pot is about 50% house 50% other (pension savings land art shares securities bonds etc)

If you want to take £224k as the average house. Double it and you have around £448k pot divided to 1.75 kids = £256k each kid

We can do a check to see if this is a reasonable guess.
If you model the UK as 20 million kids 20 million in the middle and 20 million old
You get 20 million recipients per generation x £256k = £5.12 trillion.
Seems close I would have guessed £6.6 trillion which would be 2/3rds of the national wealth.
So it broadly checks out
Roughly speaking British born kids will get around quarter of a million each in inherited wealth.
Yes I am aware some will get little to none but a lot of British born kids get very significant sums

Those figures for how many kids people have are about women who are of reproductive age now. You can use them to consider how much today's babies may inherit when they're in their sixties, but remember that the boomers mostly came from large families - that's why it was called a baby boom - so their inheritances will be split more ways.

GreatApe wrote: »

And what exactly is the point? Sure we would have millions more living alone and the total fertility rate would fall further. What is the advantage you seek to create?

I'm not sure that being able to afford to live alone necessarily prevents people from reproducing, or conversely that sharing accommodation for financial reasons inevitably leads to more babies.

zagubov

GreatApe wrote: »

What kind of metric is bedrooms?
A 100 sqm 2 bedroom home is just as big as a 100sqm 4 bedroom home
Couples typically want 80+ sqm
Families 120+ sqm
And ideally 2.7meters+ floor to ceiling height

Anyway you can't define under or over occupancy
Housing is not food which has a definite calories a persons needs

Even the Germans who have about 50% more housing space than us (per capita) are complaining of a housing shortage.

Everybody's got more housing space than us!

That doesn't mean they don't need more space.

Nobody's going to think "I can't complain - at least I've got more floorspace than the Brits in their ridiculous sardine-tin houses!"

Frankly we could do with (low-rise) flats with lifts and stairs being built all over London to start with. Nobody thinks "I need to move to London to garden". Certainly not the people from all over the world that come to live in London. It imports young people and exports old people. It needs a stock of housing that suits single people and maybe couples. It's not (well most of it) a place where you'd think it smart to bring up kids.

In other cities, with smaller populations it might be sensible to have family homes but it's important to make sure public transport's functional as we'd be mad to replicate the car-reliant urban sprawl that the rest of the anglosphere seems to be copying from America.